Posted by 3 Beer Effect on March 20, 2002, at 3:17:53
In reply to Is ordering meds from overseas legal or not???????, posted by PhoenixGirl on March 19, 2002, at 15:38:08
"A new bill was recently passed by Congress that amends a portion of the Controlled Substances Act (21USC956(a)). This amendment allows a United States resident to import up to 50 dosage units of a controlled medication without a valid prescription at an international land border. These medications must be declared upon arrival, be for your own personal use and in their original container. However, travelers should be aware that drug products which are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may not be acceptable for such importation. FDA warns that such drugs are often of unknown quality and discourages buying drugs sold in foreign countries."
"Possession of certain medications without a prescription from a physician licensed in the United States may violate Federal, State, and/or local laws."(Oddly enough, you can legally import 50 units of even schedule II drugs without a valid prescription, but once you are on state soil, you could be arrested for possession of a controlled medication w/o a prescription by the state or local police. At the US Border Patrol checkpoints which are generally 50 miles inland, the agents can search your vehicle with your consent & confiscate your medications if you don't have a prescription but only the state or local police can arrest you- The bp agents can call them & easily make this happen if they want to bother with it or if you make them angry by lying to them etc. If you have any illegal drugs in the vehicle such as marijuana the border patrol can make an arrest & will impound your vehicle.
"lt is important to have medications in the originally-dispensed container";
"It is against the law not to properly declare imported medications to U.S. Customs".MAIL ORDER IMPORTATION LAW (Controlled by the FDA): "The entry of prescription medicines is restricted and subject to the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Depending on the FDA review of the medicine, it may be released to the addressee or seized."
I couldn't find the info on mail order yet, but I know that controlled prescription drugs (Schedule II thru Schedule IV) available in the US are not allowed to be imported. In other words benzos could be seized but non-controlled substances like Zoloft would not. Many slip thru however since they can only inspect about 10% of all packages.
International pharmacies say that you can import 3 months worth of meds for personal use- you can probably do this with Adrafinil which they mark as a "supplement" on the box. But any controlled substance is a definite no-no with the FDA, regardless of what an international pharmacy says on its website. Theoretically, Modafinil or Alertec, the foreign versions of Provigil could be seized also if the inspector recognized the name as a foreign version of Provigil (schedule IV). Rivotril, the foreign name of Klonopin would definitely be seized- all the benzos/pain killers & their foreign names are familiar to FDA/Customs inspectors.
poster:3 Beer Effect
thread:98860
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020318/msgs/98976.html